Shelf Life

Love to Love Ru

That aside, I can't figure out why the budget of To Love Ru was so high. How popular was the manga? The show regularly turns out episodes with surprisingly nice animation. For example, in this set, an entire episode is set in Edo-era Tokyo. Having worked in animation, I know that kind of episode is tons of extra work for the staff. All new character designs, backgrounds, and props had to be created and colored and shipped off to wherever to animate. In a normal episode of To Love Ru, props, characters, and backgrounds just get re-used; it's normally not terribly labor intense.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the staff didn't want to be working on To Love Ru. Sprinkled throughout the series are painstakingly well animated cut-away shots to space battle scenes. It's as if the storyboard artists and animators desperately wanted to work on a sci-fi show, but that just isn't what's hot right now on Japanese TV. Maybe the manga-ka wanted to do a space series, too, but his editor forced him to set it in high school. (I haven't read the manga, I don't know.)

The entire second half of the series is similar to the second half of Kimagure Orange Road. In KOR, there's an odd "What If" episode, a Top Gun parody, and some other surreal shenanigans for what was a (slightly) more realistic show. To Love Ru was never realistic, but the Edo-era episode was a stretch. An entire episode is devoted to a magical girl show that Lala is watching. In one episode, Lala gets a fever that changes her personality each day, leading to a series of "What if"s. What if Lala was a tsundere? Etc.

In one bizarrely Furry-content heavy episode, a minor character is almost coerced into marrying an alien cat lady. This time I know I'm not wrong about saying "Furry," because the cat lady had both a muzzle and humanoid breasts. Oddly, that's the only low budget, slightly off-model episode in the set.

I'm not sure why anyone would voluntarily watch To Love Ru, except for Jason Thompson, who claims to love 90s love comedies. [TOP]

"Never a dull moment for the Traffic Safety Division," a senior officer jokes in the last episode of Full Throttle. I beg to differ! It is nothing but dull moments for the Traffic Safety Division. In one episode, these so-called "cops" are stuck making tissue paper roses. They're more Prom Committee than police officers.

Natsumi is called a "loose cannon" in one episode. Normally, I'm not a fan of cliché cop movies, but I wish that YUA had more American cop film clichés. I wish the officers would "Blow up half the harbor" or investigate a strip club or something. (Michael Kupperman's Snake and Bacon are part of this highly recommended book, which was adapted into an Adult Swim pilot.)

The series keeps cutting back to a half-completed bridge. The season arc takes place over the course of a year, and it's revealed that construction on the bridge will soon be complete. I was hoping someone would jump a car (or a motorcycle, I'm not picky) over the half-completed bridge, but (spoilers) it never happens! Instead the bridge is completed and the Traffic Safety division drives across it slowly and safely during the bridge opening ceremony.

This clearly isn't a show about things I like. I like sports anime because I like watching ambitious characters working hard to achieve their goals. I like romance because people get together and break up, which I count as "something happening". I like comedy because it's funny. YUA is about enjoying the status quo. The characters act predictably through situations that are only sometimes funny. The romances develop at about the same speed that snails mate. (I'm not going to look for that on Youtube.) YUA is a nice show about nice people, like Growing Pains or a workplace version of Facts of Life.

Is it weird that I would rather watch the original You're Under Arrest than Full Throttle just because the cels were hand painted? After 2000, all anime was digitally colored, but I know the original was hand painted on cels, because I still see the cels for sale at conventions. At least if I was watching a cel painted show, I would know the cel painters put some blood, sweat, and tears into their work. They were living out their youth by the smell of paint at the end of an era. Almost no blood, sweat, or tears is expended by any of the characters in YUA (a statistically insignificant amount, anyway). Fortunately, not all anime fans are quite as bloodthirsty as I am.

I can't condemn YUA that much. It's well animated. The episode where Natsumi likens her romantic interests to "cake" and "steak" made me laugh. I also approve of the fact that Aoi's coworkers don't seem to mind that he's a cross-dresser.[TOP]